Ambidextrous people easier to influence emotionally

People who are relatively ambivalent about which hand they use may also have moods that are more susceptible to suggestion.

So says Ruth Propper at Montclair State University, New Jersey, and colleagues, who discovered that “inconsistent-handers” – those who favour neither their right nor left hand – are more easily persuaded to feel a certain way than consistent right-handers.

Almost 90 per cent of the world’s population remains loyal to the right hand, whether brushing their teeth, flipping through TV channels or whipping up some brownies. The remaining 10 per cent is divided between people who consistently prefer the left hand and those who switch between right and left.

To see whether handedness had any relationship to emotional stability, Propper attempted to influence the moods of inconsistent-handers and right-handed individuals by asking them think happy, sad or anxious thoughts while listening to different kinds of classical music.

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Inconstant moods

Proper found that inconsistent-handers not only reported that as soon as they walked into the lab they had more negative feelings, suggesting their moods were more immediately influenced by their surroundings, but were also far more likely to report slipping into a new mood during the experiment. The right-handers proved more resistant to suggestion, reporting less flux in emotion.

“Handedness can be a marker for how the brain is organised,” Propper says. Inconsistent-handers tend to have a larger corpus callosum – the bridge of neural fibres that allows the two hemispheres of the brain to communicate. Propper explains that greater communication between the halves of the brain in inconsistent-handers could explain their emotional suggestibility.

Some researchers have suggested that the left side of the brain is involved in maintaining a consistent view of the world, while the right side functions as an anomaly detector, alerting the left hemisphere when it is time for an update. “Increased access to the part of the brain involved in noticing things that don’t fit might make you more likely to change your mind,” Propper says.